That’s because I believe the main policy of the four major parties — and RTE — is to find “distractors” to divert public attention from the core problem of Irish politics: how to cut the huge public sector pay and pensions bill. That heavy health pay bill is the principal cause of the continuing crisis in the health service. And it resulted, however indirectly, in Roisin Shortall’s resignation.

As to calls for the introduction of a wealth tax, I would say: What wealth?

I do not believe that there is substantial untapped wealth in this country which is untouched by taxation; some maybe, but not substantial when you take family homes into account or land assets for the farming industry.

Some of it’s generational. Many people like Lynch ( 50-something?) think of the Irish language as part of a package that dominated their upbringing – Catholic Church, corporal punishment, Irish). The things that haunted their youth have largely been exorcised since. Irish is the surviving holy cow.

Very good and astute point. The Irish language has arguably been tainted by its co-option by the Trioka of the the GAA/FF/Catholic Church. Will having a very poor experience of the ‘official’ effort to convert the anglophone Irish into, somewhat reluctant, gealgoiri, I see my eldest, attending a gealscoil, speaking Irish freely and unself consciously. Irish may yet flourish, and the gealtacht may dwindle as it flourishes.

I find the closure of the London office bizarre. It is our closest neighbour for better or worse. hough I suppose the money saved can be used to pay for some special programmes by Gaybo or Charlie Bird, some consolation.

And the HEAP chart, using earlier data from 2007, had a nice indicator of scale. The paper chart (PDF here) is 1 meter high. The highest income band shown on it is €132,000–€134,000 (2,800 househiolds headed by a single male, and 2.800 households consisting of couples plus children). Then, in the top left-hand corner we get the following note:

Continuing at this scale, to include the income of €118 million, the average of the top three wealthiest households in Ireland in 2007, the chart would be 750m high or 12.5 times taller than Liberty Hall.

Yeah, it is before the crash, and will be lower now. But it is hardly accounted for by family homes or farms.

And yeas, I am mixing and matching income and wealth data, but when your income is that huge, it really doesn’t matter that it’s not actually wealth.

And the latest CSO figures, for 2010 in the SILC study, reported (page 11 of the report; PDF here)

[A]n examination of equivalised disposable income by decile between 2009 and 2010 was carried out. Results showed an uneven distribution of the percentage change in equivalised disposable income across the deciles. Those in the lowest income decile experienced a decrease in equivalised disposable income of more than 26% while those in the highest income decile experienced an increase in income of more than 8%.

The table on pages 14 and 15 of that report show that the disposable income for 2010 was

for the poorest 10 percent of the population, an average of €171.24 per week

the whole state, an average of €830.46 per week

for the richest 10 percent of the population, an average of €2,369.53 per week